115911-massively-interview
Content ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Massively used to be a big booster of Wildstar. They aren't any more. It's not just Massively either, it's pretty much everywhere in the Internet gamesphere that isn't here. Former players are very bitter and people who've been pointing out Wildstar's issues since closed beta are toasting each other with champagne to have been proven right. The whole narrative of "It's not the game's fault, it's the players who suck!" that's all over these forums, unrestrained, is causing a lot of bad feeling in the greater MMO gaming community, and the community is lashing out. I wonder if the folks claiming that the problem is the players and not the game really understand how much damage they've done. I suspect they don't. | |} ---- ---- Does it have to be one or the other? I'm pretty sure there's blame to go around. | |} ---- Yea, I'm sure the juvenile inability to move on with their lives has nothing to do with these responses either. Because mature, intelligent people prefer to gloat and cavort every time they think they're right about how wrong other people are. | |} ---- Yep, that's the way to throw more gasoline on the fire, all right. Keep it up. More name-calling and insults of other players is definitely what Wildstar needs right now. :wacko: Yes, it's absolutely human nature to say "I told you so!" It's particularly satisfying when the person insisting they were right when they weren't has been a jerk about it, and you know it is. There wouldn't be nearly as much celebration of Wildstar's struggles if the Wildstar fanbase hadn't been so dismissive and insulting of players with real complaints. You think anyone can dish out that garbage and somehow not get it tossed back in their faces at the first opportunity? Nope. This is all perfectly predictable and the only thing you (and Carbine and Wildstar) can do right now is just ride it out and try not to make things worse. The comment crapstorm is probably going to continue until WoD launches and people get occupied with that, and then it will die down. | |} ---- ---- ---- I'm not innocent when it comes to this sort of thing, but I believe the answer you're looking for is: insecurity. Insecurity is why many gamers so badly need to prove they're right, why they want to see things they dislike fail, why they often don't try to see the broader context or step outside of the paranoia bubble. If it's not this it's pure malice, and I don't want to think that my fellow gamers are driven by this alone. Insecurity is at least a more humane and universal explanation... :P | |} ---- ---- It's as though you weren't around for the last 6 months? this game's community was a torrent of: "love the game but I think this could be better" followed by pages of "loser idiot go back to wow you crybaby" and of course devs just completely glazing over that problems might even exist and forum mods locking criticism threads while leaving the "It's not the game it's the players threads alone" This is just the fallout of that All the people that were insulted and shamed and flamed for the audacity of pointing out issues get their turn now that just about everything they've been saying has been vindicated by carbine and they will do so in the full range of childish to mature just like those that defended the game as perfection did before Let the dragon thrash around until it tires out and goes back to sleep don't be a white knight poking it and keeping it pissed off, you can't kill the dragon and for your own knowledge calling people juvenile is taken as an insult if you want to believe it or not | |} ---- But then there's the flipside of the whiteknight, the flamer. So OK, let's all agree that whiteknighting and flaming are intrinsically bad. So where does that leave Carbine and the 'normal' players who suffer from the gloating? You see, both sides are wrong but whereas one side, through the arguments here, seems to get away with throwing poop around in every article for X months, the other side is simply 'wrong'? I completely agree about the dragon laid to rest. But the 'fallout' hasn't exactly slowed in the last 2-3 months that I've been actively on the forums. As far as the juvenile comment, your point is valid. But also understand that it was in reference to certain comments on a different website, so there would be no one to 'take' it, and there are certain times (again, someone posting a loop of a woman dancing on a grave) where juvenile is entirely appropriate. The truth can hurt. and I'm sometimes juvenile myself. :P | |} ---- ---- Have you already completed all of our raid content? What sort of changes were you looking for? | |} ---- Gratz on Avatus btw, when are you releasing the video? Who got dat pink weapon? | |} ---- ---- I killed Avatus as a level 30 at the end of beta event. He didn't drop anything. He wasn't that hard. | |} ---- kobe | |} ---- Just yesterday I read again -this time in a French forum- that the game was for the hardcore raiders only and as such wasn't interesting. With such a misconception out there about the target audience of the game, it's no wonder people have left in droves. I believe there lies an important key to getting back old players and seducing new ones. Carbine has to let it be known that Wildstar caters for various playstyles, Carbine needs to work on that innacurate image a lot of folks have of the game, and to make it loud and clear that players can "play the way they want to play" (and strive to improve on the content casual are offered by giving them a more rewarding sense of progression). That wrong perception has caused the game a lot of harm. A lot of explaining, advertising and promoting will be necessary to change that, and in that respect such an article is a very good starting point. Keep it up. EDIT: Those two quotes OP mentioned also got me really wondering, can't wait to get an answer on those! | |} ---- right now actual group content is kind of lacking and is in this weird niche place like adventures are pretty much a joke they're so easy and lacking challenge in any way. It's like enduring boredom for the sake of gear while dungeons are... let's put it this way, I have a varied group of friends The more casual people that want to login, run a 50 dungeon through the group finder, and be done playing an hour later find them to be completely impossible The hardcore people trample through them with 5 people in assault spec just slaughtering everything before it even has a chance to be dangerous there needs to be more dungeons for variety and have to find some sort of enjoyable for everyone middle ground ground | |} ---- ---- ---- That depends entirely on what your definition of elites is. Ultimately, all raiding requires is that you get a group together and practice. If that's really such an insurmountable hurdle, then whatever. | |} ---- ---- Actually, the Defile apparently includes a whole string/chain of 20-man open world events. That seems like a great opportunity to get out and do some casual large-scale content. At least I hope it will play out that way. | |} ---- I am afraid it will end up like tree of life event... No one will do it because #lol rep grind. People are definitely sick of it. | |} ---- ---- I would really, really like to know some specifics on this, because... I'm not seeing it. Is this about the difficulty thing? Y'know, just because you don't agree with other players on whether WildStar is too hard or not, doesn't mean those players are dismissing all complaints about the game. It's pretty easy to see that the vast majority of criticism gets taken as valid. | |} ---- I'm thinking about starting a doc file of all the insults and nastiness that gets tossed around on this board so that the next time someone says something like this, I can just do a file dump and go "There. See?" And that will end the discussion. The most common and worst sort of post for inviting greater community backlash was the ever-popular "If you don't like Wildstar it's because you're a baddie scrub -- go back to WoW!" (See supriselol up above there.) If you haven't seen this stuff, it's because you haven't been looking or haven't been paying attention. I used to call out these guys as "Blizzard Plants" because they were doing such a good job of driving people away from the game that I posited that they were in the pay of Blizzard, hired to deliberately ruin Wildstar's player base and thus the game's chances, but it was like shoveling back a snowdrift with a teaspoon. I never actually believed that literally, of course -- but I was hoping they would see the level of harm they were doing and the backlash they were inviting from the larger game community. They didn't, of course. So now the backlash is here, and as I said, it's utterly predictable. "I'm a baddie scrub? Well my game is still thriving, and YOURS is DEAD. So enjoy your HARDCORE, jerkwad!" Utterly predictable. | |} ---- this, so much this. i said i was done and gone but hours later im back checking to see if anyone gets it and people do, this post shows that whats funny, it was big wow patch today, i went back after not having played, you know what happened? i said "sorry havent played for a few months go easy on me" we did 4 dungeons in a group, made friends, the big bad evil wow people didnt tell be to get out or get good we had FUN and werent judged or utterly denied the chance at said fun because "we werent hardcore enough" you know what, i am a baddie scrub, fine, i like an easier option for dungeons/raids to see the lore that is 99% of the reason i play role playing games id love to see ohmna, hell any of the eldan in the data cubes, id love to know what the Genetic archives are for and how that plays into the story i dont have 5 nights a week and 3 hours a day to practice those raids but you know whats awesome? i figured out what to do to get my lore fix, here on these very forums im going to see how garrosh and the iron horde turn out without guldans trickery and the demonic taint and you know what? i wont miss 1 cupcaking iota of the story, because i have the option to see it all so thanks, hardcores, whiteknights, carbine, this scrub IS going back to wow, and taking my 15 bucks a month, future CE xpac copy, credd purchase money with me. edit- http://imgur.com/94TWifD | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Boom, right to the moon Alice... right to the moon:P | |} ---- Pfft, you should upgrade. Mine heals me on her Esper. | |} ---- ---- "WildStar currently has hundreds of thousands of active players." If you really want to parse the quote, the lower limit would be 100,000 players. He didn't say "a couple hundred thousand" or "a few hundred thousand" Of course, he isn't going to be allowed to be very specific, but I imagine he would be as generous as possible in his verbiage. | |} ---- Pretty sure that in using the plural form of a hundred, it means there's more than one. So saying "hundreds" would mean that there is at least be two hundred. | |} ---- Come on, there's PR BS and there are flat out lies. One would not have to solo a zone-wide event: | |} ---- ---- ---- Lunaria, I think this post has been the most productive and respectful post I have seen from you lol :) And actually makes alot of sense, meaning that for those end-gamers to have a higher difficult dungeon and/or adventure might just make the game fun for ya'll again? Ok, lmao, who am I kidding, fun wouldn't be the word I would use for hard-core players. But still a great idea :) I actually remember that topic! You mean it wasn't true? O.o but...but, all this time I thought that was true! Agree that what's being said on other websites is a predictable reaction. Kind of like "karma". But, I also agree with majority on this forum that Carbine is truly working hard to turn things around and I plan on continuing to support them. | |} ---- Most people don't seem to do that event more than once while leveling on Farside, anyways. Also, where's your super secret data that shows the exact number of subs? To prove that Carbine is lying. Inb4: "Being realistic and using common sense means I'm a fanboy." | |} ---- Yeah, sure... that thing you do maybe once before leaving Farside. That's a real good indicator of overall population... and not in fact only the Farside population on your server. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Holy shit 4 kids in 4 years. When does the body have time to heal?! Yea, lady, don't be talking smack to the person paying for your subscription! :lol: | |} ---- Your made-up math makes me cringe. But i do agree with the last line. I can definately see the game having 200k players. | |} ---- Speculation has its downsides. :P That said, how is the 'math' made up? I'm using official numbers and a calculator, the only part that varies from this is the "I'm being cautious" hacking of numbers, which, if you stuck to the real numbers, would only prove more supportive of my argument. | |} ---- ---- WOW! We finally discovered what reporters and the (mass) media are usually up to. | |} ---- It's quite reasonable to think it's probably a healthy dose of both. | |} ---- Thing to remember about population is people dont realize how many are in each zone. Last night in stormtalon there were at least 50 players in thayd just kinda running around or chit chatting. There were so many people at SW that I could barely play and it died in literally like 2 minutes. I would say there were at least 100 players there from both factions, then the tree event just before that had 2 full raid groups and again who knows how many dom where included in that as well. Now lets factor in everyone thats probably in raids at that time. My guild was for 1 so thats another 20 right there, then factor in how many were doing adventures, dungeons, leveling, new players. Thats just for one faction. There have been alot of new people leveling on stormtalon the past few weeks. So thats just one faction and one server in NA PVE. At the given time I was playing. Now think about all the oceanic players playing that you dont see. Then factor in all the EU players and their servers (Pretty sure they have a bigger population than we do). I honestly don't think they were stretching that they have hundreds of thousands subbed. But we don't see those numbers because there are many people doing different things all at different times from raids/dungeons/adventures to pvp to dailys or leveling and even just standing around in the capital. I think it will become much more apparent that the numbers are pretty big when servers come back up. I even bet you that people will complain that there are TOO MANY PLAYERS in events causing stuff to die to fast and lag/fps drops etc etc. | |} ---- Snarky comments aside, he said changes to the raiding system, which I would assume means a move to 20-man (or smaller). Wanting more raiding content is not the same as wanting 40-man raiding content. The current plan is not worth his subscription, and I doubt he is alone. Every 4-5/6 20-man guild right now that can't make the transition once they down Ohmna will be more lost subscribers (especially with WoD around the corner that they can easily switch to with flex/20). 40-man was always a risky expiriment, and I am surprised that so many resources were placed on it, with virtually no back-up plan, and just stop making them isn't a good plan unless you have a new 20 man ready to go (a single boss encounter that is between dungeons and GA is not it). I was a supporter of 40-man, because it has a lot of benefits but they aren't being capitalized on and the playerbase is not adjusting, and who knows the playerbase might stabalize and see success in it, but I doubt it. | |} ---- You know they are working on more 20 man content right? The "Boss-in-a-box" augmenters encounter has been on the PTR for quite some time now. There will likely be more of that down the road. Expecting them to release new raids every month is kind of ridiculous. So the snarky comments are perfectly reasonable to that sort of attitude. Further, if any of the players have ANY respect for their guildies at all beating ohmna and calling it quits is just terrible form. Yeah maybe 3ish players are geared out, but there are so many more in the raid that helped those who are geared get geared. Those people need to run GA more times until they are geared too. By then there will hopefully be more content, or circumstances have changed and guilds have merged such that DS is possible. That attitude "oh we killed ohmna, I beat the game" is beyond selfish. My guild (that runs 2 raids) has 4 ohmna weapons now. There are at least 36 people plus bench who don't. I'm not saying all of us will get their ohmna weapon, but it's absolute crap to assume that as soon as a guild that can only field 1 raid hits 6/6 their raiding life is over. | |} ---- Yes, I do know they are, since I noted it in the post (a single encounter between dungeons and GA). They are working on more of all forms of content. A single new boss encounter in 7 months (if it is in the January drop, which is likely with the loot/currency overhaul scheduled), after only having 6 (12 if counting mini-bosses) at launch for 20-man is not enough content to keep him, or me, subscribed. To just say well you haven't done the 40-man is not going to keep anyone in a similar position in the game. If you see no future fun in the game, why would you stick around? | |} ---- Have you done the challenges? Are your gloves imbued 5/5? | |} ---- ---- Your Gfx card would melt if it had to render a map with 200k individual player models in plain view. Explode, if one tenth of them even casted a spell. Also....basic counting these days is apparently hard. Since their server total is being reduced to FOUR (not two), but are designed for increased capacity. Disingenuous poster is disingenuous. Inb4: "Posting while having an ounce of integrity." means "I'm a fanboy." | |} ---- More like sarcastic post is sarcastic :p | |} ---- Well, you said it..... :P | |} ---- ---- Dhar used the word properly, poster was being disingenuous. The OP obviously knows that 200k people who play for around an hour or 2 at a time on average spread unevenly across 34 servers doesn't look like Mardi Gras in New Orleans. | |} ---- Serious question: did you just find out about the megaservers? There have been free transfers off low population servers for the last month. That's why you're not seeing people on Myrcalus. Regarding the hundreds of thousands, they're probably counting active subscriptions and people who bought subscription time with CREDD, not concurrent log-ins. A lot of people have been keeping subscriptions up but waiting for megaservers to jump back in, and many have transferred to Stormtalon or Pergo. /Maybe my sarcasm meter is broken and I just need more coffee. :D | |} ---- Well, I can say that like people who hang out in Thayd, I enjoy soloing in an MMO just to have other players hustle and bustle around me. Empty zones make me sad, even if I don't have to camp respawns. The biggest hassle to group open PVE content is getting enough players in the same spot and providing incentives to do so. After the nerf to Settler Improvements, Scientist takes top spot for most useful Path because of Group Summon and Portal, which addresses the first issue. Put out a LFM request with the tag, "can summon" and your chances to get other people to join rises considerably. As for incentives, the problem lies in being competitive with Adventure and Dungeon rewards. It takes time to get a group together in open PVE since there's no queue. Thus, the rewards/time is skewed in favor of instanced content. Attunement requirements are not a solution; they just make me want to kill myself out of boredom. What might be a solution would be to have people able to queue up for group bosses and group events while in the zone and have some sort of rapid travel mode to get there once a group is assembled. Loot tables and contributions might also need work, particularly healing contributions. | |} ----